Le preoccupazioni per la privacy influenzano la disposizione dei consumatori verso i dispositivi connessi (IoT)?

Technological developments bring with them considerable benefits to society as well as considerable amounts of data. Although companies have always used data to make decisions, they now have access to exponentially increasing amounts of data that can provide enormous possibilities, but also bring with them many threats to consumers and to their privacy. In fact, although consumers are attracted by the emergence of new technologies and their usefulness for everyday life, they are also increasingly concerned about their privacy. This is particularly true in the case of the Internet of Things (IoT). Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to investigate how these concerns among consumers influence their behaviors. Indeed, it is intended to study how consumers' self-reported privacy concerns make them behave more protectively for their privacy and how IoT-related privacy concerns impact their disposition towards the IoT. The aim is also to test whether socio-demographic and cultural factors influence these concerns. An online questionnaire was sent out and it was found that certain socio-demographic and cultural factors have an impact on the level of people's privacy concerns and in particular gender and culture show a clear difference in the level of concerns. In addition, high privacy concerns in some cases show a more defensive attitude to protect their privacy than lower concerns, and high privacy concerns related to IoT show a higher reluctance towards IoT, in particular on purchase intention and willingness to let smart speaker manufacturers share audio recorded by users for criminal investigations.